


the best things in life (are not things)

by darcylindbergh



Series: things fairy tales are made of [5]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Christmas Presents, Extremely Domestic Fluff, Fluff, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-24
Updated: 2018-12-25
Packaged: 2019-09-26 12:54:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,749
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17142131
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/darcylindbergh/pseuds/darcylindbergh
Summary: “Do you like them?” John had asked, reaching out to flop a soft little ear back and forth.Sherlock had given him an absolutely withering glare. “Don’t be ridiculous,” he’d said flatly. “Of course I do. Don’t you?“*John has a certain special gift to give.





	1. First

**Author's Note:**

> Happy Christmas, love y'all <3 You don't necessarily have to have read the full series to "get" this one-shot, but some of the details might make a bit more sense.

Sherlock says John is the romantic one.

John scrunches his nose in protest— _no, you are—_ but he laughs and he kisses Sherlock’s temple, just where the thread of silver is starting, and he’s quietly thrilled that they’re both right.

He’s in love, he’s _still_ in love, and even after all these years it feels like a fresh snowfall under a new sunrise, golden and crisp and brilliant, turning his cheeks pink and putting a reach into his hands he’s never felt before: a need to seek out, a need to hold on.

Sherlock is always reaching back.

It unlocks something within John, to feel that reach in Sherlock’s hands, in Sherlock’s smile, in Sherlock’s heart. It pulls aside the curtain on some part of John that he’d starved and beat down and then forgotten, embarrassed and ashamed, coaxing it out from behind old fears and bad memories. It makes John feel bigger, fuller, clearer, and he is _done_ with pretending that’s not who he wants to be.

He _wants_ to be the romantic one.

So finally: he is.

*

In the beginning, John isn’t sure of himself. He offers up his love tentatively, holding it cupped in his hands like a trembling bird, always with a caveat— _it’s okay if you don’t want it—_ always braced for a refusal. He’s always prepared to take a step and find himself over some invisible line, ready to be tossed back with a derisive comment and a sneer.

Sherlock never sneers.

He takes John’s offerings with careful, deliberate hands, pressing kisses to the corners of John’s mouth, soothing away John’s uncertainty. If sometimes he misses one or two, he always comes back to it later, squeezing John’s fingers in his, touching their matching rings together to make them _clink_ , as if to ring a bell in John’s mind: a reminder that John’s love is accepted and returned and wanted and needed and held onto.

It takes time, but John feels himself stretching into it, becoming certain in his own skin, in the depth and breadth and strength of his love for Sherlock. In the depth and breadth and strength of Sherlock’s love for him.

 _We are endless_ , he thinks, kissing Sherlock one more time. Always one more time.

*

Christmas Eve rises grey and wet, and they stay in bed for hours.

“You,” John says, tasting the delicate skin under Sherlock’s wrist, breathing deep and steady as he settles deep inside. Sherlock is all warmth and acceptance beneath him, smeared kisses and trailing fingertips; his eyes are heavy-lidded and content.

It’s been a slow coming together, soft and intimate. He thinks about words like _gentle_ and _tender_ and _happy_ , about _caretaking_ and about _keeping safe._ He thinks about the rhythm of Sherlock’s breath, long and deliberate, and about the pulse under his mouth; he thinks about grey, wet mornings he’d spent in cold sheets longing to be somewhere else and he thinks about luck and he thinks about the skin-warmed ring on his left hand and the gift he’s not even a little bit afraid to give Sherlock tomorrow morning, and he thinks this is what it means to be _making love_.

“You,” he repeats. His hips roll. Sherlock’s hands are hot on his forearms, pulling him closer. “God, Sherlock. I love you.”

“John,” Sherlock says. His hands tighten and release, tighten and release. “John, John, _John_.”

John drags himself to a slow stop so he can brace himself on one elbow, reaching up to brush the curls back from Sherlock’s forehead. He kisses Sherlock, barely, barely, just to feel Sherlock stretch up into it.

“John,” Sherlock breathes out, and the sound of it is like breathing in.

*

There are notes written in the margins of Sherlock’s newspapers: _love you - xx._ There are scraps of papers stuck into the pockets of Sherlock’s coat: _don’t do anything stupid without me._ There are emails sent to the shared inbox: _miss you today._ He sends texts from across the sitting room just to watch the soft smile touch Sherlock’s mouth when he fishes his mobile out of his pocket: _you look cosy wrapped in your dressing gown like that._

He sings silly songs into the corner of Sherlock’s jaw, pressed back against the kitchen worktops or under the spray of the shower; he leads dances in the low lights of the sitting room and under the spotlights of the streetlamps along the Thames. He buys flowers from the corner shop when they’re bright and scones from the bakery on Marylebone Road when they’re fresh; he serves dinner with candles and always finishes putting on a bandage with a kiss.

There are more kisses than there are bandages, and Sherlock’s crooked smile gets bigger and softer and easier every time he lights up under John’s love, and John thinks forever next to Sherlock couldn’t even begin to be enough.

*

It started with a case, six weeks ago, but before that, with a secret, whispered into the amber shadows of the streetlamp outside their bedroom, into the crook of John’s neck.

“I swore I’d never love anything again,” Sherlock had confessed, feeling unusually small in John’s hold, as though the mere memory of loss had made his bones brittle. John had tugged the blankets up higher around his shoulders, had pressed a kiss against Sherlock’s crown, against his cheekbone. “But this—this is different. Worth the risk.”

“I can’t promise this won’t end in that same way,” John had told him, reading the fear in his voice. They never talk about this. They never talk about how close they’ve already come to it: the end of all things. “We both know it will, someday. Not anytime soon, but someday.”

“I know,” Sherlock had said. He’d swallowed hard; his hands on John’s shoulders were sweaty, somehow frail. “You’ll wait for me, though,” he’d said, a statement and not a question, raising his face so John could see the fierce conviction in his eyes. “It’s not the same. I know you’ll be waiting for me.”

John doesn’t know what happens, in the after, but he had nodded anyway and pressed a promise back against Sherlock’s mouth, and he had not felt ridiculous when he’d said, “I’ll wait forever for you, if I have to.”

Sherlock had smiled against his lips. “I doubt I’ll live quite that long.”

*

John did not die for Sherlock Holmes.

He would, if it were between the two of them. There’s no question of it: he would without hesitation, without second-guessing. Without remorse.

He used to think it would have been easier if he could: if he only had the opportunity, he would have had the excuse. He used to think that was the only way he could have said all the things he wanted to say to Sherlock—with tangible proof, written in his own blood, hard forensic evidence that his love was real and was true, without asking for something in return that Sherlock couldn’t give. A confession without expectation; a poisonous love that only ever hurt John himself.

John knows better now.

He knows better, because Sherlock’s face lights up whenever their eyes meet, because Sherlock never hesitates to take hold of John and pull him close, because Sherlock doesn’t hold the words behind his teeth anymore. They flow freely, and often: _I love you, I love you._

John knows better, because Sherlock once pressed his hand to John’s chest and said, _I have a heart—you carry it for me._ Because Sherlock kissed him in the rain and asked him to stay. Because Sherlock stood with him on a rooftop in London and slipped a ring onto his left hand and promised to keep him forever.

Because Sherlock had died for him, or tried to anyway, and it always hurt more than if Sherlock hadn’t, and John knows now, John understands now: it would hurt Sherlock in that same way if John tried to die for him—endlessly.

 _You carry it for me_ , Sherlock said, one Christmas morning. _You carry it for me_ , Sherlock says, in the dark of their bedroom warm with their bodies pressed together, in the backs of cabs quiet with defeat, in the early morning light when they both need the reminder.

 _Tha-thump. Tha-thump._ John takes his own pulse in his wrist sometimes, just to remember: that’s Sherlock’s heart in there, and John’s promised not to break it.

So he lives, he lives in a way he’s never lived before, he lives in a way he never thought possible, and he breathes and he laughs and he promises and he worries and he scolds and he grins and he grows and he dreams and he builds and he needs and he heals and he reaches and he _lives_ , he lives.

Sherlock does too.

 

*

And the case:

“What kind of Grinch steals _puppies_?” John had asked, incredulous, his face crumpling into a disgusted scowl as he read over the email.

“Competitive breeders,” Sherlock had answered off-handedly, and then: “Is that really in the inbox? Let me see.”

Of course it had actually been a competitive breeder, in the end—a breeder who hadn’t appreciated their client’s push for revised breeding standards. Sherlock found the missing litter in a half-abandoned greenhouse on an enormous estate out in Somerset. They were barely more than a wriggling bundle of wrinkles and yelps, hungry but ultimately unharmed, and John hadn’t missed the look in Sherlock’s eye when he had picked one up and tucked it under his chin while they waited for the police.

“She’s cold,” Sherlock had defended, even though there was a portable heater keeping the greenhouse quite warm.

“Do you like them?” John had asked, reaching out to flop a soft little ear back and forth. “Bulldogs?”

Sherlock had given him an absolutely withering glare. “Don’t be ridiculous,” he’d said flatly. “Of course I do. Don’t you?”

And the puppy had snuffled closer, burrowing into Sherlock’s scarf, and Sherlock had outright _cooed_ at it, and John had thought, _well. Why not?_

*

John gets up at six o’clock on Christmas morning.

They’ve got a bit of a tradition around Christmas—Chinese takeaways the night before, long lazy mornings the day of. It’s a day for just being around one another, just soaking in the atmosphere, and John’s a little regretful as he shimmies his way out from under Sherlock’s arm with a whispered excuse of needing the loo. The floorboards are cold under his feet; he compensates for the loss of Sherlock’s warmth and weight by slipping one of Sherlock’s dressing gowns on over his shoulders.

Downstairs, an exhausted-looking Mrs Hudson passes a heavy, wriggling bundle into John’s arms with a fondly disapproving look at the collection of wrinkles inside. “You can come down later for all her things. She’s just been out not twenty minutes ago,” she tells John, before turning her attention to the squirming blanket. “Now you behave for your papa, young lady,” she says sternly. She winks at John. “He’s trying to be _romantic_.”

“Mrs Hudson,” John sighs, put-upon, even though he’s grinning like a loon and wearing a tartan dressing gown that’s obviously too long in the sleeves. She just giggles and shoos him away and shuts the door emphatically.

John tucks the bundle close against his chest, and grins all the way up the stairs.

*


	2. Second

Christmas Eve has been Sherlock’s favourite since he was very small.

The smell of gingerbread in the air, the fairy lights twinkling against a dark sky, the sense of waiting quietly for something good you _know_ is going to happen, waiting without any urgency to the mugs of hot cocoa or the Chinese takeaway shared on the sofa or the tinny sound of Christmas carols played from a laptop: Christmas Eve is about anticipating magic, and Sherlock is a believer.

It’s hard not to be, with John warm and soft under his arm, curled close in their shared bed. It’s hard not to be, with snowflakes drifting past their window, just barely visible through the gap in the curtains, just barely audible over the _clink_ of his ring settling against John’s.

He knows that John will be there in the morning, and that’s neither magic nor a miracle, but Sherlock believes in it just the same.

*

He sleeps.

He sleeps and he dreams: meadows filled with the hazy light of a summer evening, shaded forest paths winding around gnarled roots, pebbled beaches that smell like salt and seaweed. He sleeps and he dreams about places he’s never been, places he’ll probably never go. He dreams about going everywhere, hand-in-hand with John.

The dream stutters and shifts as something underneath Sherlock’s hand moves; he grumbles a weak protest.

“Just need the loo, be right back.”

He sleeps.

*

John Watson doesn’t die for Sherlock.

Sherlock thinks he meant to, once. That he thought it maybe would have been easier, that it maybe would have freed them both.

It wouldn’t have. Sherlock died for John Watson twice, and it only buried them both under the weight of lies he knows had never helped, left them each suffocating in graves of his own making.

It had felt like dying, that night so long ago, opening the door to John standing in the rain and realising he had been waiting just as long as Sherlock had. It had felt like dying, to see him looking up at Sherlock like Sherlock was his last life-line, to see him so uncertain and so ready to be turned away, to see John looking up at him with _this is it_ in his eyes, a last-ditch jump into the wind with no expectation of being caught.

It had felt like dying, so Sherlock had stepped out and kissed life back into John, the chill in their cheeks making their mouths seem hot against each other, the sob building in both their chests making it hard to breathe against the weight of their relief.

“I didn’t know you were waiting,” Sherlock had said that night, and John had looked up at him with eyes as bright and fathomless as the night sky and said, “I’ve been waiting since we met.”

Sherlock promises never to die for John again.

Instead he promises to live, and he slips that promise around John’s left-hand ring finger, a solid weight John can _feel_ , and living’s not always easy and they aren’t easy people and they don’t live easy lives, but it’s easier with John’s hand in his. It’s easier to turn his face to the sun; it’s easier to smile and to laugh and to sink comfortably into his own skin.

“It’s worth it,” he whispers to John, and John knows and John understands and John doesn’t make promises he can’t keep, but he keeps the promises he makes.

Sherlock can feel John’s pulse in his wrist, beating out the rhythm of Sherlock’s name, and it’s worth it.

*

There’s something wet rubbing at Sherlock’s nose.

Sherlock sniffs and pulls back, sleep still wrapped muzzily around his mind, and the something stumbles and falls against him. His hands close around it to steady it before he even opens his eyes; it wriggles and squirms in his grasp, and Sherlock’s heart skips a beat as his clumsy brain suddenly catches up.

He opens his eyes at the same time he inhales sharp with realisation, and he pulls the little thing in his hands closer to his chest to protect it before he even sees it properly. “John?”

Somewhere in the bedroom, John giggles. “Go on,” he says. “Look at her properly.”

A small, wrinkled face with a dark nose and a pink tongue looks up at Sherlock, a surprisingly stern expression on such a little thing, teeny paws struggling to climb over the sheets to lick again at his nose. Sherlock helps it automatically, pulling it closer yet, and it makes a noise like a _woop_ , only in miniature.

There’s a puppy in their bed.

There’s a _puppy_ in _their bed_ on _Christmas morning_.

“John,” Sherlock says again, and he can’t help himself; he buries his face into the little folds and wrinkles of the puppy’s warm, wriggling body, overcome. His eyes are unexpectedly wet.

John laughs. “She’s the one from the case you fell in love with, do you remember?”

Sherlock nods and sniffs. She smells like talcum powder and kibble, and she finally gives up on trying to lick Sherlock’s face and instead settles heavily against Sherlock’s chest, panting happily. He touches her tiny nose, her little ears, and finally looks over to find John sitting on the side of their bed, wearing Sherlock’s dressing gown and looking pink around the ears with an expression of unfathomable fondness.

“She’s yours,” John tells him. “Happy Christmas.”

“John,” Sherlock says again, reaching for him; John leans over and kisses him, ignoring the little grumble of protest from the puppy until she wriggles up between them to lick their chins apart. Sherlock presses one more kiss to the side of John’s mouth before scooping the pup closer to kiss her too. “How did you know?”

John puts his hand over Sherlock’s, gentle around the puppy’s tiny body, and grins. “You’re a little transparent sometimes, bumble.”

Sherlock laughs.

*

There had been a dog, once.

There had been secret adventures, quiet hideaways, long treks across the garden, side-by-side. There had been red-gold fur in Sherlock’s tiny hand, and a soft nose and gentle tongue to lick up any tears so Sherlock wouldn’t have to admit to them. There had been the evenness of breathing Sherlock could never quite match his own to, a heavy warmth taking up too much room in Sherlock’s twin bed, and a happy bark and a blur of excitement whenever Sherlock came home from school.

There had been a grey face, then, and a lower bark and a slower lope, but steadfastness, courage, commitment: these things were unchanging.

Except change is inevitable, and one summer Sherlock had come home from school to be met with _nothing._

Only his mum, standing at the door where Redbeard should have been.

“I’m so sorry, darling,” his mother had said, and he’d been too big, too old to allow her to gather him up anymore, and he’d stood alone, looking up at the front door and refusing to take another step toward the empty house. “I’m so sorry.”

*

After the case, after the puppies had been gathered up and the reunited with their mother, a taller than average bully with a longer than usual face, John had taken Sherlock home, put him in the shower, and then taken him to bed.

“It’s okay to be upset,” John had whispered into his curls as Sherlock hid his face in John’s neck. “People do terrible things. It’s okay to be upset by it.”

“Nothing terrible even happened,” Sherlock had protested. “They were all fine. They weren’t hurt. It wasn’t a murder, or even a kidnapping, there were no—no threats to national security, or anything like that.”

John had shrugged. “So? You’re allowed to have limits, Sherlock. They were innocent, and helpless, and they were taken by someone who didn’t care about that. It’s okay if that’s upsetting. It’s _natural.”_

His hands had dragged up and down Sherlock’s spine, soothing and comforting. Sherlock had wondered if he needed the comfort too: if taking care of Sherlock is John’s way, sometimes, of taking care of himself.

“I wish I could have taken care of them,” Sherlock had finally said. “Just one, even. Just to be sure it was, you know. Just to know that it was loved.”

They’d laid there for a long time, then, John’s hands dragging smooth and slow, Sherlock breathing warm against John’s skin. Pressed together like that, Sherlock always thought about their heartbeats syncing, aligning, calling out to each other and answering in kind. _I love you, I love you._

He’d thought John must have fallen asleep by the time John had spoken again. “Would you really?” he’d asked. “Want a puppy, I mean. It wouldn’t bring up bad memories? Or was that just, you know, the case talking?”

Sherlock didn’t answer right away. “Someday,” Sherlock finally said. “I think I would. There were a lot of good memories too. And it’d be different, too, different dog, different life. And honestly, John—” he’d shifted up, finding a smile and a kiss for the corner of John’s mouth—“they were _so cute_ , weren’t they? God.”

John had reached up to kiss him again, properly. “Almost as cute as me.”

“Don’t push it,” Sherlock had answered, but he had kissed John back just the same.

*

They get up, the puppy wrapped protectively in Sherlock’s dressing gown—the one Sherlock’s wearing, not the one John is. Sherlock’s already thinking about potty training, about competing kibble brands, about how to convince Lestrade that a dog of a breed with a notoriously bad sense of smell is somehow helpful to whatever investigation. John goes upstairs to uncover the stash of dog-related accoutrements he’s collected—a red collar, a neoprene bone, a stuffed rabbit toy—while Sherlock sits on the sitting room carpet and unwraps his bundle. “Who’s a good girl?” he croons softly as she bats playfully at his fingers. “Who’s a pretty girl?”

“You’ll need to name her,” John says as he comes back downstairs. The grin on his face is enormous; Sherlock smiles back.

“Petunia,” he suggests, but he shakes his head almost immediately. “No, too old-fashioned, I think.”

“I like Petunia,” John says mildly.

“No. What did the breeder call her?”

“Umm…” John pulls out his mobile, searching through his email. He must have taken pains to hide _that_ thread from Sherlock—not that Sherlock’s in the habit of searching through John’s email anymore. “Artemis.”

They both look at her, a rolling pudge of wrinkles trying and failing to wriggle under the sofa.

“No,” Sherlock says, reaching under the coffee table to lift her back into his lap. “It should be solid, I think, but I’m hardly going to name her Tank, you know? And not something cutesy either—she’ll be a grown lady, someday. It should be a solid, English lady’s name.”

John looks at him, and he looks at John, and they both look again at that stern little expression in that puppy face, and say, simultaneously, “Victoria.”

Victoria _woops_ her little agreement, and Sherlock laughs, tilting his head back to accept John’s kiss as he goes to sit in the armchair beside them.

“Vicki, for short,” John posits. “We can hardly call her Tory, after all.”

Sherlock sniffs. “Her name,” he says, a bit snottily, “is _Victoria,_ if you could struggle all the way to the end of it.”

John laughs. “Mycroft says that to your mum.”

Sherlock doesn’t respond to that.

*

Victoria is a brilliant little pup, Sherlock decides immediately, _obviously_ far beyond her average puppy peers. She’s endlessly curious—they’ll have to puppy-proof the flat if they hope to have any peace—and even though she does piddle on the floor, she does it in front of the door, clearly indicating an intent to have done it outside if only Sherlock had picked up on some yet-unknown cue.

John eventually gets up and brings back mugs of hot milky tea, starting a fire in the grate behind a new screen. He seems content to sit and watch Sherlock and Victoria play, getting to know each other, and Sherlock can’t help but lean against his legs and press the occasional kiss to the back of his hand. They laugh and exclaim over Victoria’s antics, and she _woops_ and pants over theirs, and eventually Sherlock has to close his eyes and let the moment wash over him.

There’s a smell of rashers cooking in the air, and fairy lights twinkling around the fireplace, and John has a knack for finding the good things Sherlock hadn’t known he’d wanted and making them happen.

So it’s Christmas, and Sherlock’s grown up now but it’s still magic, and he’s still a believer, and he watches Victoria chew affectionately on the end of his dressing gown’s belt with John’s hand on his shoulder and thinks, _we are endless_ , and he _clinks_ his ring against John’s to cover the fact that he can’t speak around the solid, warm weight of John’s love filling up his chest.

John _clinks_ his ring back.

*

It’s late when John comes to kneel beside the sofa, brushing Sherlock’s hair back, waking him gently. Victoria is curled on his chest, sprawling a little in her exhausted sleep; she probably has to go out one more time before they go to bed properly, but Sherlock isn’t looking at her right now.

He’s looking at John.

The fire’s burned low, and John’s a gold-tinged silhouette in the evening light. The radio’s still playing Christmas carols somewhere in the flat—a soft, guitar-led version of _O Holy Night_ that softens the love in John’s eyes to something unbearably tender.

“Hey,” he says quietly. “Did you have a good Christmas?”

Sherlock looks away briefly to rub a hand over Victoria. “You always surprise me, John Watson. Yes, I had a good Christmas. Did you?”

“Best one since you asked me to marry you,” John answers, and there’s a look in his eye and an undercurrent in his voice that means he’s been thinking about this for a while, probably leaning against the doorframe between the kitchen and sitting room, watching Sherlock and Victoria napping together on the sofa. “Best one I could have imagined, really.”

It’s not melancholy, the way John says it, not really. It’s not somber, but it is serious, and Sherlock wonders how long John had stood there, watching them and thinking about a past they’ve already escaped and a future they’ve unlocked between them. 

“John,” he says, finally catching sight of a wet gleam in John’s eye, nearly invisible in the low light of the evening but there all the same, but John stops him from finishing the question.

“I just never, after everything—” and he says _everything_ the way he means _the suicide, the wife, the bullet,_ and he needs to take a deep breath, then, to finish— “I just never thought I would be here, and it still surprises me sometimes, you know? I never imagined that something like this—that I would—that I could really have a family.”

“You _are_ here,” Sherlock says, reaching to cup John’s jaw, to press their foreheads together, “this _is_ your family, me and you, and now Victoria, we’re yours, John, I’m yours. I’m always going to be yours.” His grip tightens around the back of John’s neck, maybe even a little too tight, but he wants to be sure that John is listening, that John understands that he’s as serious now as he was that Christmas morning years ago, that he’s as serious still as he was on that rooftop, pledging their lives together. “This is always going to be your family, as long as you’ll have us.”

“I know,” John says, without hesitation though perhaps a bit wetly, and he nods and sniffs and Sherlock can feel the struggle in his throat, in his shoulders. “I know. I’m yours too. Your family. _Our_ family.”

“You’re stuck with us,” Sherlock confirms, and John huffs a laugh, that sort of giddy release of a laugh people make when they’re so unbelievably happy they can’t decide whether they’re laughing or crying. Sherlock laughs too. “I promised you, didn’t I? You carry my heart, John Watson, and you carry our family in it too.”

“Yeah,” John says, laughing again, and he says it again, still a little wonderingly but sure of it too, “Our family. This is our family,” and he leans in to kiss Sherlock, maybe a little more roughly than he really meant to, but he’s breathing hard and wiping at his eyes with the back of his hand, and he kisses Sherlock again, and again, and then Victoria yelps as Sherlock leans too far over and dislodges her from her sleeping spot, and they laugh as she crawls up to lick away the remaining salt from John’s face.

“You’re ours,” Sherlock tells him one more time, pulling John up from his knees beside the sofa, cradling Victoria between them as he holds John close. He’ll always say it one more time. “You’re home.”

John doesn’t answer, but he fists his hands into Sherlock’s dressing gown, and doesn’t let go for a long time.

*

John lives.

Sherlock does too.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Leslie @hudders-and-hiddles didn't beta this beforehand, but this is a pre-emptive thanks for the beta she will inevitably do when she reads this the first time. Love you, bb.


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